Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz has been lauded twice by the Academy, once for playing a good guy and the other for being a villain. Waltz seems to have the ability to play both and I am still not quite sure which I prefer. His next project may be another chance at an Oscar and it would be for playing a hero.
The Hollywood Reporter has Waltz taking the lead in the film TRUE CRIMES, potentially for director Roman Polanski. Here’s the synopsis:
Adapted from David Grann’s 2008 New Yorker feature, the story involves the case of Krystian Bala, a Polish writer who was convicted of murder in 2007. The murder for which he was convicted had been a cold case, baffling the Polish police for years, and had been called a perfect crime. Bala, never a suspect in the case, attracted attention when he published a novel that detailed a murder very much like the one that was frustrating the police.
The article the film is based on was written by David Grann, the New Yorker writer who wrote the phenomenal books THE LOST CITY OF Z and THE DEVIL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES. All of his stories are true but read like the best novels you could imagine. Any of the short articles in THE DEVIL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES would make a great film. (Note: TRUE CRIMES does not appear in that collection)
Waltz would play police officer Jacek Wroblewski who reopens the case and gets drawn into the seedy underworld of Polish sex trafficking. The story is being compared to THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO in terms of tone and subject matter. It would be interesting to see Waltz take on a starring role like this for a director as talented as Polanski. TRUE CRIMES will be produced by Brett Ratner, but don’t hold that against him.
There is no date for TRUE CRIMES, but as with every project Christoph Waltz joins, it instantly becomes a must watch.